I hate it when historians and pseudo historians don't take things in context.

Lincoln wasn't a radical...and that's what the Abolitionist were. He believed in the law and democracy. The constitution legalized Slavery in the South. Lincoln believed that it would eventually die out. However with the introduction of it into the West threatened to prolong is indefinitely.

And the people didn't want Blacks to be "free" either. Lincoln main focus was to save the Union. But Lincoln knew how to navigate politics and the people. He knew how to change the outlook of people to put an end to Slavery.

Lincoln used the N word, because it wasn't considered a bad word back then. He told off colored jokes of all types because he was a guy.

He sad African Americans were inferior not because they were black, but because they did not have a chance to blossom.

"I want every man to have the chance - and I believe a black man is entitled to it - in which he can better his condition, when he may look forward and hope to be a hired laborer this year and the next, work for himself afterward, and finally to hire men to work for him. That is the true system." (Speech at New Haven, March 6, 1860)

FTFA: Others point to the public comments Lincoln made during one of his famed senatorial debates with Stephen Douglas in 1858 when he said, "There is a physical difference between the white and black races which I believe will forever forbid the two races living together on terms of social and political equality."There must be the position of superior and inferior, and I as much as any other man am in favor of having the superior position assigned to the white race," Lincoln said in the speech.

People keep forgetting that Lincoln was a politician. He said shiat to get elected. He had to run as a moderate. Especially running for office in a radically divided state such as Illinois (abolitionist north with southern sympathies in the south) As the book Team of Rivals pointed out, Lincoln made an effort NOT to alienate anyone.

Fredric Douglas specifically pointed out that Lincoln was the first white person who ever treated him like a man, and not as an educated black man.

Yes he suggested to sending Slaves to Africa. He was trying to save the Union by doing what could be done.

"If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that. What I do about slavery, and the colored race, I do because I believe it helps to save the Union; and what I forbear, I forbear because I do not believe it would help to save the Union."

FTFA: No. 1: The Great Persuader was not LincolnThe hell he wasn't. Lincoln knew that the people had to be convinced to do the right thing. He got the moderates and radicals together in order to get the Amendment past.. (Abolitionist were radicals)

See, for most of the world, it works like this:If we want an entertaining film, then all that's necessary is that the get the history right enough that it takes a low-grade geek to have a problem with it. Take, for example, Lincoln. In this case.

If we want a history lesson, we go read a book.

If we want ultra-PC pedantics, we'll go watch PBS.

People who go to major theatrical releases expecting a full and correct accounting of all of the nuances of history need to stop going to movies. They'll never be happy, and they're annoying as all fark.

Or, they laid the groundwork and then Lincoln had the political power and the will to finish the work. It's not an either/or proposition, and blaming the movie "Lincoln" for ignoring a part of the story that's not in any way part of the focused narrative they're telling in that movie is...well, it's a stupid CNN.com article. Oh wait, that means it's a normal CNN article.

JosephFinn:Or, they laid the groundwork and then Lincoln had the political power and the will to finish the work. It's not an either/or proposition, and blaming the movie "Lincoln" for ignoring a part of the story that's not in any way part of the focused narrative they're telling in that movie is...well, it's a stupid CNN.com article. Oh wait, that means it's a normal CNN article.

Fano:unlikely: unlikely: People who go to major theatrical releases expecting a full and correct accounting of all of the nuances of history need to stop going to movies. They'll never be happy, and they're annoying as all fark.

Of course, we don't have enough documentaries on say, the history channel these days. And even in its heyday, it would have been nice to cover more topics than your average social studies fair.

Here's my problem with the article:

Ctrl-F for "Doris", "Goodwin", "Rivals" - no results.

It pisses me off when everyone takes shots at the movie and says nothing about the book it was based on. Team of Rivals got made into a movie for a very good reason; Goodwin did an amazing amount of research using a ton of sources that thousands of Lincoln scholars never bothered looking through. I read the book as part of a graduate course on the Civil War, and I'm re-reading it now after having seen Lincoln.

You want to talk about distorting history and taking things out of context? This shiat right here:

He used the N-word and told racist jokes. He once said African-Americans were inferior to whites. He proposed ending slavery by shipping willing slaves back to Africa.

That's a fine bunch of information to take at face value by 21st-Century readers. But a LOT of people proposed African repatriation - including Jefferson in Notes on the State of Virginia (Jefferson even went so far as to say he thought that the only two viable solutions for America were to free black people and send them back to Africa, or keep them as slaves, and allowing them to co-habitate with white Americans would be impossible). It was seen as a viable solution up until the end of the war by a number of people, and to characterize Lincoln as having some sort of radical idea is disingenuous.

History is a complex monster. The best scene in Lincoln is when he discusses the legal quandary of the Emancipation Proclamation and it's relation to the way the war was prosecuted as an insurrection and not a war with a separate state. Lincoln knew exactly what he was doing, and knew that he had to tread into moral gray areas to carry out a successful war effort.

And Stowe, Garrison, and Douglass don't get screen time or attention because - get this - the story Spielberg was telling was about events centered around Lincoln as thematically arranged in Goodwin's book, which wasn't concerned about any of those characters.

And I really wonder what sort of perverse canonization they're trying to put on John Brown in all this. Why hold him up as a more important figure than Lincoln - because his raid was likely the point of no return for avoiding armed conflict over the issue? Brown was like the man who shot Archduke Ferdinand in 1914 - a man full of self-importance and self-righteousness, who thought he was doing the will of his god, and ultimately was a barbaric force of violence that merely triggered deeper political and economic problems.